Where Now On Iran?

By Steve Hynd

Iran has sent a five page proposal to Western powers that, while not offering any concessions on Iran's civilian nuclear program, does ask for a renegotiated universal non-proliferation treaty which would contain "real and fundamental programmes towards complete disarmament and preventing development and proliferation" of weapons of mass destruction. In an interview with the WaPo, Iran's Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, political aide to Ahmadinejad, expanded upon what that might mean.

"Since nuclear weapons are an international threat, with the cooperation of all countries we can design an international framework that, basically, prevents research, production, multiplying and keeping nuclear weapons and also moves toward destruction of present nuclear weapons. Iran is ready in this path to offer any and every kind of cooperation and effort. No country must be exempt from this international framework against nuclear weapons. "

We all know who this is aimed at - Israel, which has never joined the NPT and has an arsenal of at least a couple of hundred nuclear weapons it has never admitted to publicly. The others who would be forced to join the revised NPT under Iran's proposal would be North Korea, India and Pakistan - the latter two also U.S. allies with nuclear arsenals developed outside the NPT framework and thus without the IAEA's inspection regimen. Western hypocrisy at sanctioning Iran or North Korea while rewarding Israel, India and Pakistan with aid has long been a sticking point with many developing nations. Meanwhile, U.S. hyperventilating about an Iranian "imminent nuclear threat" is widely seen as fearmongering and pushed by Israeli disinformation and political lobbying, a case of the tail wagging the dog.

Although the U.S. has already rejected Iran's proposal as "not really responsive", Russia has said that there is " something there to use ... Iran is ready for a comprehensive discussion of the situation, what positive role it can play in Iraq, Afghanistan and the region." Russia has also joined China in ruling out the use of force and saying that there is no case for increased sanctions on Iran. Putin has also stated again that Russia has no reason to doubt that Iran's nuclear program is purely peaceful.

With no chance now of a fresh UN Security Council resolution, I expect the U.S. to cobble together yet another coalition of the willing to unilaterally agree to a regimen of fresh sanctions. But with U.S. lawmakers seemingly favoring an embargo of petroleum product imports as part of that regimen, things might get very thorny. Venezuela has already said it will send 20,000 barrels of petrol daily to Iran from October and Chavez has an even tighter military alliance with Putin than Tehran does. The only way to enforce such an embargo, something originally suggested by Israel, would therefore be a naval blockade of Iran's ports - which without a UNSC resolution would be an illegal act of aggresive warfare, a war crime, which would explode the Gulf into warfare.

It's likely that even America's staunchest European allies would baulk at following two consecutive U.S. presidents into illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East, thus Obama may have no choice except to settle for trivial sanctions and further dialogue. At least, given the many pro-Israel hawks in his administration, it's nice that he'd have no choice except to do the only smart thing left - talk more.

Update: Greg Theilmann, senior fellow of the Arms Control Association, blows the hyperventilators away in a tightly-written new report (PDF) in which he examines Iran's progress to date and future prospects on all the components of a nuclear weapon: material, bomb design and delivery vehicle. (H/t Russ Wellen.)He concludes:

In spite of ubiquitous rhetoric about "time running out" and "red lines being crossed", an actualized Iranian threat is years, not months, away. Constructing realistic timelines for Iran's potential development of nuclear warheads and the ballistic missiles to deliver them sets the stage for a patient and prudent pursiuit of U.S. nonproliferation objectives.

Let's hope Obama listens to saner heads than those hawks driven from Tel Aviv.